Readers' comments

Much as we prefer a leader with Solomonic judgement, we have to live with what we have. Gujarat is not just riding the wave, with its 12 pct growth rate it is one of the locomotives pulling the entire national economy. And it is widely agreed that Modi deserves credit for the remarkable economic performance, whatever other stains on his record. An effective Modi is surely preferable to a megalomaniac Mayawati or ineffectual Bhattacharjee.

As to the riots - he surely must bear the blame for not stopping them, but we do need to move on. What is more important, there has been no riot since last six years. Congress and Rajiv Gandhi could not stop the 1984 riots either. But time healed the hurt, and in 2004 the unthinkable happened, a Sikh became the Congress PM.

@firo"As to Modi, whatever else you may say he has delivered the one thing that India sorely lacks, good governence. Gujrat under his watch has prospered as never before."I agreed with you until this. Gujarat would have prospered without Modi, hes been riding a wave that he had no part in creating. What kind of good governance is he responsible for, when he cant even stop a riot for three days? And is he really responsible for recent jumps in industrialization when he has to go to AAHOA to beg for foreign investment?

MARXIST INTELLECTUAL, the very term is an oxymoron. Anyone who still believes in Marxism in the face of historical record, obviously has no intellect at all. Bhattacharjee is an intelligent man who has fully realized the folly that is communism. Unfortunately his party the CPM has spent a generation brainwashing the people with their crazy ideas, which have come full circle to haunt their government. Indeed the CPM still has jokers like Karat as leaders.

As to Modi, whatever else you may say he has delivered the one thing that India sorely lacks, good governence. Gujrat under his watch has prospered as never before. Calling him an Unappologetic Hindu Nationalist will not change that.

(Pardon my earlier comment it was thinking aloud & posted it without reading. I hope this is a little better edit of the same message and will be understood by more people than myself, :))
Like Ratan Tata himself said "there's a good "M" and a bad "M" ...." the good one being Modi ( subjective ) & bad being Mamta.

It was a total failure on the part of the Bengal CM & the CPIM to see this project through. The CPIM are just not strong enough to see this through and crush Mamta Banerjee & the Trinamul Congress.

Gujrat, Tamil Nadu & Karnataka are probably the only states where the Government in power is undisputedly the strongest in the state & are able enough to crush oppostion parties & politicians see project of this magnitude excecuted.

Most of the other state governments are held ransom by the opposition who can effectively cripple them like what we saw in west Bengal. The Trinamul Congress (Mamta Banerjee) has pretty much made CPIM & Buddasaheb look like Sh!T ( for a lack of a better word)

example : In UP there is Mulayam & Amar Singh to comfortably put a spoke in the wheel against Mayawati, In Maharashtra the Thackrey Clan ( Shiv Sena & now MNS ) can ruffle Deshmukh's feathers causing chaos, while the congress party sits mute.This is the case in most of the states.

Eitherways This will be a valuable lesson / case study for all to refer in the future before investing time,money & effort in large projects. Be it businesses,polititians,employees or farmers in time to come. It will be very difficult for W.Bengal/CPIM to recover from this loss of face.

Like Ratan Tata himself said "there's a good "M" and a bad "M" ...." the good one being Modi ( subjective ) & bad being Mamta.

It was a total failure on the part of the Bengal CM (CPIM) to see this through. They are not strong enough to see this through. Gujrat, Tamil Nadu & Krnataka are probably the only stated where the Government in power is undisputedly the strong & able enough to crush oppostion see project through.

the rest all have state governments are held ransom by oppositions example : UP there's mulayam & amar singh to comfortably put a spoke in the wheel against mayawati, Maharashtra the thackrey clan can ruffle deshmukh's feathers so on and so forth.

Anyways will be a valuable lesson / case study for all be it businesses/polititians/employees/farmers in time to come. It will be very difficult for W.Bengal/CPIM to recover from this loss of face.

The Nano debacle can be considered a poster on every wall in West Bengal, proclaiming just one thing- DONT INVEST HERE!

I hope, for Bengal's sake, that Mamta didi comes to power in the next election. She will face the financial and anti-development fallout and hopefully her government will be brought down. I can see her facing television interviews and corporate boardrooms where she is regarded as a pariah and the Bengalis will see the mess she has landed them into. Communist or no communist, people are pragmatic enough to see when they get the wrong end of the stick.

This debacle should stand out as a case study for two things in Bengal:

i) Regardless of sentiments, even the ordinary man on the street should understand the bigger picture and not get caught up in short terms political rivalry (especially of the exceptionally stupid Mamta variety).

ii) Bengal's sub-par performance is entirely of their own making. They ordered in on the menu, paid for it and I hope they enjoy their meals! They have contributed next to nothing in India’s economic renewal, and they deserve to suffer.

Gujarat's gain is Bengal's loss. While analysing this issue it will be worthwhile to remember that the agitation whipped up by Mamata Banerjee, leader of Trinamul Congress, would not have been possible without the covert support of some corporate as Ratan Tata rightly alleged. In this crossfire of political and corporate rivalry and one-upmanship the people of West Bengal have been cheated and let down. The state badly needs more employment opportunities as the number of unemployed youth is growing rapidly. All of them obviously cannot be employed in the IT sector. Manufacturing can be a viable alternative. This process has suffered a major setback. As for the farmers whose cause Mamata espouses so eloquently, my question is are they any better off without Nano?

All said and done this state of affair is not a doing of one day or a year. Some people may point finger to Ms. Banerjee for successfully drive away TATA's. Let's take a step back. The Marxist Communist Party (CPM) has ruled the state for good thirty years and perpetrated and corrupted every aspect of life. In particular they are responsible to destroy the public education system- their motto probably was it is easier to fool the ill-educated, then the intellectuals. Now if any one has followed CPM activity in the last 4 -5 years, the Yachuri group was all against opening up the country and Buddhudev Babu for it. How that could happen in the strict cader based CPM party. It is very simple. After ruling 30 years the caders of West Bengal are restless, they have not seen the personal prosperity for which they supported the party. On top of that other states are racing ahead to grab the windfall of industrialization. They wanted their fair share -( please note not for the people but for themselves alone). It also serves two purpose people of West Bengal will see as CPM trying to bring prosperity which will ensure their seat in next election and also caders will be able to line up their pocket in the same manner the Chinese provincial governors make themselves rich. Buddhudev Babu, being a another brick in the cader based CPM party is the part of this master mind. His epic battle with party high command is just an eye wash.So the West Bengal CPM went about their Industrialization binge in a blend of Stalinist and Chinese way. History will recall both thrived at the expense of common and poor people- in complete contrast of their ideology.Ms. Banerjee has merely used the same tool CPM used successfully till date. In the word of Buddhudev Babu "paid back in the same coin". When the intentions are not honest and sincere, Buddhudev Babu's CPM party will not be able to attract industry to West Bengal. His party has poisoned the people's mind, divided the society, destroyed the basic tenants of relationship which held together the villages of Bengal - it is time for him to go back to the basics, upheld the Indian values ( not the imported Chinese values), bring back the public education system to the core and then lead the state to its path of prosperity - let the people choose their path not the pseudo-leaders.

I think it was just a ploy by the great TATA's to delay the project. The car was scheduled to be in production and at the dealers end by October 2008.I suspect,a political-industrial nefarious play was induced to allow the TATA's save their face, given that the whole world is spectating the production of this car.

I don't know why some people complain that the article is vague or prejudiced. The Economist may be somewhat misinformed about the intricacies of Indian politics but the main point is clear enough - you can't have your cake and eat at the same time. It's a valuable and profound enough point in itself. I am sure Ms Banerjee is pondering it right now.

I am disappointed that the Economist didnt really dig into the issue of what happened to the Nano in West Bengal and instead merely scratched a scab. (There isnt a mention of Kerala, the other communist stronghold, which faces similar problems, let along any type of analysis on how symptommatic the problem Tata faced is. I mean, is this a one off incident or what?)

There is a deeper rooted problem faced by the nation of millions, in the failure of its leadership to steer the country in the direction it needs to go. The way business is done has changed but the political leadership cannot swallow that pill and instead resorts to scare tactics to manipulate the vast majority who are uneducated and poor.

Strongly agree with Sunya and Indra. The real problem plaguing the country is that the intelligentsia capable of solving it have the wrong idea and perpetuate it. As a pure statistic fact, most of the intelligentsia is Hindu and knows that if it bends over backwards for special interest lobbies (read the equivalent of affirmative action) it has the popular vote. The focus needs to be on India's development, a cleaner, more educated, developed India that is conscious about the environment and is peaceful and collaborative in all its dealings.Say what you want about Narendra Modi, I'm not going to bat for him (but I will say that you cannot draw any objective conclusions on the man from any media publications), he has done the right thing on this occasion.Mamta Banerjee, pardon me for saying so, wouldn't be missed if she were gone. She represents everything wrong about India, an ugly blemish. A comment on the fact that Communism still has fans (albeit they have no idea what they support, really they do not understand). India is a TRUE democracy. Even in the free world flagship that is America, communism was crushed with an astonishing witch hunt and some innocent people's lives were made miserable. I find it amazing that it exists in India, more amazing that it gets elected every year. I ask the people of Bengal, as a proudly elitist Mumbai native, what are you doing to contribute to the country's future by electing these fools? Really? It is a negative contribution. Get up and be useful.In another note, perhaps the

Its sad that westbengal state of eastern india lost an opportunity and this episode has definately dented India's image. But the positive thing to take from this is the maturity shown by other Indian states in welcoming Nano. Gujarat, Karnataka and AP lined up 1000's of acres of land, added with good incentives to attract Nano to their states. This proves that not all states of India are non investment friendly. The fact that the resistance for the TATA's arose from West bengal should not be a surprise as this state is ruled by a communist government. In fact the other states have gone "overboard" and eagerly offered incentives, though Gujarat managed to bag it. So no investors should feel threatened to invest in India, minus the communist ruled states (west bengal and kerala). Everybody is welcome!

The economist cannot escape from such criticism as expressed in some letters. It is true that most of the articles are often nonproductive as anti Indian in nature but one must admit that Indians are their own worst enemies. Instead of marching ahead and industrialising the nation and improving standard of living, they are barin washed toward anti capitalism. India tried to experiment with Psudeo socialism and created more road blocks than improvments.
Taking this issue of 999 Acres land and 13000 families indicate the level of povery and yet there are groups in India who rather see these people live and die in poverty than let them flourish with industry. These socalled well wishers of poor are the deathknell of them. The politicians like Mumta Banerjee didnot speak for 2 years but since elections are near she took the cause of poor to see that they remain poor.Tata didnot get land or power free as she misled the public but than this is the trade of politicians to lie.
As long India has bleeding hearts and procommunist activist, the socalled Tiger may never roar. The country needs dose of reality and not misleading.
The fact is tht it is Bengal which suffered and will continue because many projects will not start due to fear factor of such road blocks and strikes.
Tata made the right decision to walk away as no one know the labour unrest and destruction of proepretry as in the past become a fact of life for Nano.

Apparently according to the writers of this article if you are a Indian Marxist, you automatically get the "intellectual" tag thrown in free of charge next to your name no matter how poorly the state you govern has done over the last 3 decades of your rule. On the other hand if you happen to be a Hindu nationalist leader of India's most enterprising state, you still have to somehow be apologetic.Im saddened that India's pseudo-secular socialist bias seems to afflict the Economist also.

I don't know enough about India to agree or disagree with the Economist. But on the broader issue of economics, it's obviuos to me that capitalist/market economies have out-performed, by far, whatever systems Marx and his likes have proposed and experimented.Chuckling in his grave? I don't know what Marx has got to chuckle about. Perfect hindsight? Perhaps.

The Economist's India stringer is frequently 'economical' with the truth and more often quite wrong too. He happens to have crowed about the Marxist Buddhadeb as being the best chief minister in India in a previous issue, and having said all sorts of rude, untrue things about Modi, he is, as it were, eating a spot of crow now. Poor James. You can't blame him too much for his prejudice. He probably hangs out a lot with a certain crowd of Delhi pseudo-intellectuals who feed him a lot of nonsense. If he were a keen journalist, he would seek out with those who are not so tied to the Congress-Communist perspective.

I agree that the Economist is often economicist, besides its penchant for snide remarks about politicians. I wish the magazine was as critical about this capitalist agenda that has now thrown us in a Global Depression.

Yet, it does have a point in noting that being industrialized is better than being pre-industrialized. I was going to say, though, that the best is to be post-industrialized. But looking at the current state of global affairs, I bet Marx must be chuckling in his tomb...

The article seems vaguely written, without thought, insight and deeply "economistic" in nature. Calling Narendra Modi an "unapologetic Hindu nationalist" is deplorable. I understand that this comes from the much ill-famed Gujarat riots. Are you trying to say that Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is an intellectual while Modi is not? Have you considered why Gujarat is one of the most industrialized state in India? Have you considered the extreme hard work Modi has done? Have you though about the prime example of leadership Modi provides? Did the author ever ponder upon the governance of Modi? Clearly not.I am not saying Mr Modi is not innocent (what politician is?). But treating him "Guilty until proven innocent" is deplorable. A coin has two sides. Try looking at the other, because if you don't, you may never realize the value of the coin.-Jai Hind!!